Sunday, August 24, 2014

From Palestine to Ferguson

1) The brutal
bombardment of Gaza by the illegitimate colonial-settler state of Israel
has been authorized by U.S. imperialism and in particular by the
Democratic Party leadership in order to prevent the Palestinian masses
from launching the next intifada. Such an uprising is both the logical
and a pragmatic step by the Arab masses toward uniting the workers and
oppressed across MENA in struggle. Inevitably the struggle to accomplish
the unfinished tasks of the national democratic Arab revolution come up
against the restraints of the imperialist order and the emerging proxy
war that traps the toiling masses between the dominant USA/EU
imperialist bloc and the emergent China/Russia bloc. The Arab Spring,
the Syrian revolution, the spread of the counterrevolutionary ISIL
across Syria and Iraq and the massive mobilizations today in Pakistan
are products of the unresolved contradictions of imperialist domination
of the Near East.

The US is facing defeats on all fronts
abroad because of the unpopularity of these failed adventures in the
military occupation and oppression of the masses abroad to solve the US
crisis of overproduction. This proves that imperialism cannot project
the class war with impunity abroad without exacerbating the class
contradiction at home.The militarisation of US imperialism is now being
used to subdue its domestic population. The police in Ferguson are
outfitted with army surplus gear and its high command is trained in
Israel. Zionist Israel is the child of its imperialist master and its
existential crisis foreshadows that of its master. The defeat of Israel
is political, as its democracy is run by the military and war resisters
are thrown in jail. Its legitimacy as a capitalist democracy is blown
apart with the bodies of the children of Gaza. It is no accident that
the global refrain “we are all Palestinians” is now one of the chants of
the mass protests in Ferguson. Just as the Palestinians refuse to
negotiate their submission to a colonial settler state, the black
working class masses in the US are not prepared to submit to curfews and
executions.

2) Long ago pacifist
leader Martin Luther King observed that the USA could not maintain a
militarist foreign policy without that same violence coming home and
exploding in the cities of the USA. Today the unresolved and unfinished
tasks of the American democratic revolution are exploding in Ferguson
and the internationalist connection is not lost on the youth, on the
African-American community, on the Palestine solidarity movement and
even on foreign governments (even the brutal Egyptian dictatorship
weighs in against the American racist brutality-obviously to cover for
its own murderous suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood.) We see the
international economic crisis exploding in brutal police repression of
marginalized and disenfranchised communities of black and brown people
across the United States. The Malcolm X grass roots movement has taken
the lead in cataloging and popularizing the fact that every 28 hours
American Police kill a black or brown person somewhere in the “home of
the free”! This level of special oppression is required by the
capitalists to keep the black and brown population in check. Every
objective analysis of the conditions of the oppressed in the ghettos, in
the devastated urban centers like Detroit, and increasingly in the
suburbs where affordable housing can be found, catalog the predictable
results of decades of declining educational opportunities,
pauperization, de-industrialization, criminalization of entire
populations (including immigrant children and families), the profitable
growth of the private prison industry populated by victims of the
capitalist crisis and fed via an attack on public education and
unionization both in public and private industry.

It is no surprise that
Ferguson has exploded! The ruling class had their warning after Oscar
Grant’s murder at the Fruitvale BART Station. The political class and
their police skated by after the response to the murder of Trayvon
Martin was pacified by time and a Teflon racist criminal justice system
tied to the corporate media and acting as an integral tool in the ruling
class system of defusing public outrage while slandering the victims
and violating their human rights by regularly portraying the victim as a
criminal and protecting and excusing the armed thugs of the state. So
in the immediate aftermath of the police murder of Michael Brown a
police-edited videotape was broadcast on all major corporate media
purporting to show Michael Brown robbing a convenience store. The
Purpose of this racist hatchet job was as always to taint all possible
jury pools in favor of the police lies, thereby making impossible the
bringing of murder charges against any cop by any Grand Jury. This is an
old police trick dating from before the electronic age.

After the Occupy Movement of 2011/2012
and the response to Trayvon Martin in 2013 we witnessed the enhanced
proliferation of military hardware, moving from the stockpiles of Iraq
to the inner cities in the USA. This is nothing less than a Bonapartist
preparation to suppress the righteous uprisings of the masses and we
watch them spread from Fallujah to Aleppo, to Gaza, and now to Ferguson.

3) The ruling class long
ago understood that in order to delegitimize the claims to, and
righteous demands for social-economic justice and equality for the black
and brown community, black and brown leaders would need to be
“whitewashed” and turned into their imperialist puppets and tools. The
“Post Racial” America had to be declared and feted just a little more
quickly than the “Post Misogynist” America in order to maintain the
status quo in the face of what was about to unfold in the economic
realm. For ruling class media, political elites and even among left and
“culturalist” academics the “class question” was put to rest as the “End
of History” was feted in 1989. Yet with the black and brown population
still oppressed and drowning at the bottom end of the economy and with
economic collapse on the not so “distant” horizon (as the “irrational
exuberance” and reified Ayn Randism was collapsed by the concrete
reality of the crisis of overproduction of capital and the implications
of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.) A heavy hand would be
required by imperialism both at home and abroad to smash the uprisings
of the workers and oppressed. The capitalist class saw the writing on
the wall. Their most astute observers knew economic crisis would
quickly deflate the speculative party and Obama was elevated mid stream
over Hillary. Post Racialism became the order of the day! And today in
“post racial” America the class contradictions are exploding in what
look like revolution and counter-revolution in the “show me” state! We
remember Dred Scott! We remember John Brown! We have no illusions in the
fake post racial America. We know it is a construction of the ruling
class and another one of their myriad tools of pacification.

4) The ruling class has
known for decades the day of the black President would be necessary. The
black “true patriot” (imperialist Colin Powell) and “black conservative
justice” (misogynist Clarence Thomas) were elevated in the post- 60’s
backlash period both as a counter to the legacy of former Supreme Court
Justice Thurgood Marshall and the anti-imperialism of the Black
Panthers, Brown Berets, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and the
various “movement” and working class anti-imperialists. Clarence Thomas
was elevated to their top court to further denigrate and disempower the
women’s liberation movement (and in particular to attack it where it
overlapped with the working class and Black movements). But the
elevation of model conservative black politicians to positions of power
did not change the actual material conditions. The Clinton
administration brought about the “end of welfare as we know it” and the
brutal attack on the condition of poor and black and brown women with
the odious (and sometimes even fatal) requirements of the “welfare to
work” programs. Millions of black and brown men were
relegated to prison labor for pennies an hour, increasingly for private
prison-industrial complexes, one of this depression’s few growth
industries. Meanwhile black and brown women were chased
off welfare into poverty and menial work in order to qualify for the
minimally available social assistance. All the while, the class of
model ’Negroes’, those trained to talk standard corporate dialect and
endorse and abide the parameters of the capitalist rule, those referred
to by pre-eminent black intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois as the Black
Bourgeoisie, were prepared and elevated to catch the flack and defuse
the situation when the inevitable fightback hit the streets.

5) This layer contains
the most commercial spokespersons, the most renowned moralists, as well
as countless preachers, poverty-agency operatives and hack politicians
who know how to ride a wave. Today they are tasked with defusing
Ferguson. At the executive level arch-hypocrite Obama says we will go to
any lengths to bring to justice anyone who kills Americans, yet the
Ferguson police department escorted Michael Brown’s murderer out of town
to a safe undisclosed hideout. We watch what looks like an occupying
army standing in formation with guns aimed at masses of unarmed
civilians, many with arms in the air. No doubt ‘whitewashed’ black
commentators will accuse some outside agitators of using them as human
shields while they created mayhem! The governor stepped in and sent
the state police with a black chief spokesperson, but his credibility
faded quickly…..then the National Guard was sent in but they were not
tasked with protecting the people, but only with protecting the police
command headquarters. We call upon all worker militants on the scene
to fraternize with the National Guard enlisted ranks to convince them
not to follow any orders to commit state violence and to revolt should
they be given. Back to the barracks and home!

Then the FBI showed up with all the
authority of the Obama White House, but contrary to all logic the fact
of 6 bullet wounds, two to the head, has not resulted in the immediate
arrest of the murdering cop. So the FBI stands around with no real role
other than to be the token serious Federal interest in the case, and the
protests just get bigger naturally enough. So now Attorney General
Holder is sent in to promise a “thorough and independent investigation.”
We would like to know how there can be an independent state
investigation of the state. The bench is getting thin and folks can see
through it. The bourgeoisie increasingly sees no way out except crushing
the suburban uprising. Crushing this uprising before it becomes a St.
Louis uprising or even the Mississippi River uprising. Even the black
President cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again. So the “Post Racial”
era comes to an end. We knew it had never been initiated, that there
were clues along the way (every 28 hours!) but now the brave youth of Ferguson have stood up and say NO MORE! The Communist Workers Group stands with them!

6) While it is clear to
revolutionary Marxism that the daily slaughter of workers and oppressed
is the consequence and cost of decaying capitalism, that the systemic
problem is not the fault of any one individual or group of individuals
who can be identified and replaced, and that the open defenders of this
decaying class system are little more than puppets acting with limited
independence from their puppet masters to enforce the right of the 0.1%
to own and control the wealth of the planet, there are layers of
enforcers among the communities of the oppressed and working classes
that are more insidious than the likes of Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas,
Barack Obama and Eric Holder. There are those who evoke Martin Luther
King and tell us to back down and turn the other cheek. But we put our
arms in the air and they shoot at us. What do you expect? We have black
state police officers who admonish the youth for provoking violence with
looting and Molotov cocktails, conveniently forgetting that only a week
ago “Big Mike” was shot down, unarmed with his arms in the air! The
political class, the moralists, the pacifists, all want to gather you
inside the church and get you back off the street and back into the
bourgeois political process in order to make good the deal with Hillary
that she would be next in 2016, under the threat of an even worse
Republican boogey man.

Among this layer of operatives, moralists and
pacifists are the very “socialists” who help to maintain the rule of the
capitalist class by elevating the capitalist Democratic Party to the
level of the essential and only pragmatic solution and road forward and
away from reaction in every election cycle. The Communist Party, the
Democratic Socialists of America, through and alongside the Trade Union
bureaucracies, construct the American popular front in which the
political independence of the working class and oppressed is
subordinated to imperialism with a promise of a seat at the table. Thus
we see the International Socialist Organization calling upon all workers
in their orbit to follow the Reverend Al Sharpton and the New York
Labor bureaucracy in a “We Will Not Go Back March” exactly to canalize
and dam up worker frustration with murderous police tactics.
Irrespective of the nominal intentions of Messrs. “Socialists”, Sharpton
and the bureaucrats are stone Democrats and identify their interests
with bourgeois class rule. Where workers live in the lower-rent suburbs
the “seat at the table” is in the last row of the waiting room at the
unemployment office!

7) The leaderships that
hide the workers’ historic program for socialism from the masses do the
work of the ruling class. What the uprising in Ferguson shows us is that
decaying capitalist imperialism will have to take up arms against the
oppressed not only in Fallujah, Rio de Janeiro, Gaza, Aleppo and
Donetsk, but that not even the USA can resolve the crisis at home
without unleashing class war. The leaders of the workers movement who
talk socialism and workers power and Black Nationalism and women’s
liberation on Sunday and on Holidays, on the morrow tell you not to
organize your fighting workers/labor party,
not to organize your own community assemblies, not to organize your own
collective self-defense, and not to organize class struggle caucuses to
revive your unions! No, they tell you to elect a new crop of ‘white
washed’ progressive Democrats. Take Seattle, Washington where fake
socialist Kshama Sawant tells workers that the police are workers too
and endorses the new police chief as a progressive! Take Richmond,
California where fake socialist mayoral candidate Mike Parker withdraws
from the campaign, telling workers they have no need for political
independence and should vote for the capitalist Democratic “progressive”
candidate Tom Butt. There are already many preachers out on the street
trying to contain the masses and bring them back to the fold, but that
system is broken. Occupy may have withered away from misleadership, but
the contradiction of decaying capitalism drives the masses into the
streets out of sheer necessity.

8) The solution that is
missing is the coalescence of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic revolutionary
workers’ party that charts a course for independent working class
political action, which forms up the popular democracy in every
workplace, community and school and which will develop and assert the
workers’ historic program through mobilizations, strikes, occupations,
and direct challenges for power, as the power of the capitalists to rule
effectively becomes increasingly less tenable and more and more
dependent on the overt violence of the state.

9) So while the world is
in flames and the CWG comrades participate in their trade unions and
community organizations, they have marched on the Ports of Oakland
against the Zionist slaughter, they organize against those in the union
who deny workers their independent party, they have mobilized in the
anti-fascist and anti-Klan actions, they have stood with the workers and
oppressed of Brazil, Korea, the Ukraine, Syria and Egypt as they have
had to rise up against the imperialists over the last year. And again
today in the USA we take our program of political independence and
working class labor-black-brown self defense to the beleaguered and
oppressed communities who daily suffer the violence of the state. We say
there can be no end to police brutality under capitalism. Thus we
oppose the advocacy of civilian police review boards; they are not a
solution. When, in the 1960’s, these review boards were demanded by the
Black Panther Party and SDS, this represented for them a break to the
left away from liberalism, although not a qualitative one as is usual
with the ultra-left. Today, after the experience the working class had
with such “independent” review boards such as John Lindsay’s Civilian
Complaint Review Board, the raising of this demand by the Freedom
Socialist Party, the Chicago Socialist Campaign, and Sawant’s Socialist
Alternative, amount to a sop to liberalism and an assurance to the
bourgeoisie of the utterly pacifist intentions of these groupings. The
bourgeois state killers in blue cannot be made accountable to any other
class but the capitalists. To think otherwise is to invite bloodshed on
our side of the class line, until pacifist illusions can no longer be
held.

We oppose the police unions being
considered part of the labor movement; police are not workers and we do
not defend them or welcome them as any part of the solution. We explain
the police “protect and serve” big capital at your expense. They do not
arrest Chevron for poisoning your air, they do not arrest BP for
spoiling the Gulf and killing workers, they do not arrest the fossil
fuel industry or the bankers who are poisoning the planet and they
certainly do not arrest their own for killing you! In fact to end the
rule of the capitalist class, the police and national security state
must be arrested and only the mobilized masses of the workers and
oppressed can do that.

Drop the charges against arrested protestors! We know who the real criminals are!

300 dead black and brown workers a year and no cops arrested and
punished. This capitalist system has no intention of seeking justice. We
do demand the arrest of killer cops, However this is a transitional
demand, because only popular tribunals of the workers and oppressed
which organize their own defense guards can “Jail Killer Cops” and bring
justice to the workers and oppressed.

No faith in the bosses’ courts! Build organizations of labor and the oppressed to enforce justice!

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red rave is the loud mouth of members of the Communist Workers' Group of Aotearoa/New Zealand, committed to building a new communist international to lead workers to the revolutionary overthrow of global capitalism. Since 2010 we have been in a Liaison Committee with the Communist Workers' Group (USA), the Revolutionary Workers' Group (Zimbabwe) and the Revolutionary Workers' Group (Brazil).